mouths.—Jean, let that sinner against grace have the ash-tray. Let him scatter ashes on his wicked head!"
"You have spoken so much nonsense, Julie, that it ought to be your head, not his, that should be sown with ashes," said the officer. "It happens that the very girl whom you called the Circassian was the Russian."
"You are making sport of me!"
"A genuine Russian," said the officer.
"Impossible!"
"You are quite wrong, my dear Julie, if you think that our nation has only one type of beauty, like your own. You have a great many blondes, but we, Julie, are a mixture of nations. We have the white-haired like the Finns—"
"Yes, yes, the Finns," said the French girl.
"And those with black hair, who are even darker than Italians; Tartars and Mongolians—"
"Yes, yes, Tartars and Mongolians; I know about them," said the French girl again.
"And all of them have given us a share of their blood. We have blondes, whom you may despise, but they are only a local type; a very common type, to be sure, but not predominating."
"That's strange. But she is lovely. Why doesn't she go on the stage? By the way, gentlemen, I only speak of what I have seen. There remains a very important question,—her foot. Your great poet Karasen, I have been told, said that in all Russia there could not be found five pair of small, straight little feet."
"Julie! it was not Karasen who said that, and you had better call him Karamzin. Karamzin was a historian, and he wasn't a Russian, but a Tartar. Now, here's a new proof of the variety of our types. It was Pushkin who spoke about the little feet. His poetry was very good in its day, but now it has lost a large part of its value. By the way, the Esquimaux live in America, and our savages who drink the blood of elans are called Samoyeds."
"Thank you, Serge. Karamzin, historian; Pushkin, I know; Esquimaux, in America; the Russians are Samoyeds; yes, Samoyeds. That is such a lovely word: Sa-mo-ye-dui! Now I shall remember it. Now, gentlemen, I shall ask Serge to tell me all this again when we are alone. It is a very profitable subject for conversation; besides, science is my hobby. I was born to be a Madame Staël, gentlemen.
